This will be a site to record my thoughts and musings as they occur. A 'vanity' blog or website. Postings will be sporadic as the nature of this site is not a conversation with others, but a monolog to help me in troubled times.
To Those who find good ideas, they are free for theft so long as attribution is given. They are to be *built upon* not used to demean and tear down. Ideas I present I do not declare to be *good* or *perfect* merely *better* or *different*.

09 October 2011

We have a series of on-going economic crises, yes, and those stem from the problem.

The 'Housing Crisis' starts not with 2007 but back in the late 1960's when HUD lobbied President Nixon to create an agency to allow for the packaging of home loans with government guaranteed security on the risk of those loans. Yes one government agency was telling the President that we needed more government! It seemed like a good idea at the time, no doubt, but what this did is allow the large commercial banks to have guaranteed risk portions in their portfolio dedicated to residential lending. These large organizations could out-compete local S&L's who could not take on such wide and varied risk as the larger entities could. S&L's remained tied to what made sense for lending in a local market and the intervention of GNMA created a national market that had risk tolerances above and beyond what normal lending practices for the S&L's would allow. This meant that the S&L's had to seek to diversify their risk portfolio into areas they had never been in and, as inexperienced players, they went down in the 1980's. To get to the S&L crisis of the 1980's you have to have GNMA created by President Nixon.

At that point a home was still just a home, however, and not an upwardly increasing value property. Prior to the 1960's home base valuation would go up at 1% per year, if you were lucky, thus a home was not an investment that would appreciate but a roof over your head. After the creation of GNMA came a slow but steady rise in home valuation above the rate of inflation. This was tied to other regulations that were illiquid until certain dates, which is to say 401(k) plans and IRAs. These were protected assets that you could carry over after a bankruptcy, while a home became subject to bankruptcy proceedings. Consumers shifted their savings patterns away from reducing mortgage debt (via pre-payments or ahead of schedule payments) to put money into safer vehicles, like those provided for in the tax code. Those investment vehicles meant that money was tied into them for the long term, protected and could appreciate faster in value than a home could. Thus the home now became a secondary investment vehicle because the next round of regulations loosened up the Loan To Value ratio for lending. With less stringent loan regulations comes higher home prices as people can expect to ask more than their prior 1%/year appreciation and GET IT.

Were the banks involved?

Yes, they were, at every step of the way.

Are they the sole culprits?

No. The influence of Congress in its role to allow the creation of new regulations that allowed greater risk to flow into the system, while urged on by the banks, was something that was taken up by those Congresses. No one forced them to do it and no President was forced to sign on to these bills. To change the playing field you needed Congress and multiple Congresses obliged through vehicles like the Community Reinvestment Act in the 1980's, and then the loosening of requirements on how much had to be put down to get a loan in the 1990's. By the early 2000's the NINJA loan (No Income, No Job or Assets) along with highly leveraged ballooning loans were the vehicle pushed by the regulatory atmosphere that was enabled by the regulators via the Congressional bills to do that.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac played large roles in this, as well, since they could use their money to lobby Congress directly. This is an instance of a quasi-governmental agency getting a direct line into Congress, which means that the regulators and facilitators could now spend their money on politics to woo legislators. Today these two entities continue to bleed the US treasury in ill founded loans that are guaranteed for risk by Ginnie Mae.

Thus we now have as culprits: Congress, large commercial banks, quasi-governmental agencies, government agencies, Presidents and those doing the asking for so much money on their homes.

These are the pre-conditions for a bubble and the agencies, quasi-governmental agencies and regulations (along with regulators) are still around unchanged since the housing bubble popped in 2007-08. Not a single one of them has even been 'adjusted' by two Presidents. No Congressional majority or minority in either party has even SUGGESTED killing off the source of the rot and returning to basic and fundamental local economic institutions assessing local risk for local lending.

Do not ever try to tell me that Nixon was in any way, shape or form a 'conservative'. These agencies he created are Progressive monuments to governmental power.

Throw in the Dept of Energy with the EPA and you have a nasty pot just needing the right legislation (like the Endangered Species Act) plus activist regulators (seeking to 'expand' their Congressional mandate), plus an overly regulated mining and oil industry (via the Interior Dept.) and what you get is a strategic attack on the energy infrastructure of the United States dedicated to stopping industrial production and impoverishing American citizens. Strangely enough the EPA didn't need to exist at all as States were already implementing their own regulations to stop pollution, clean up air and water, and didn't need federal help to do that. Burning rivers stopped before the EPA even existed due to those regulations. Simple observation shows that you cannot apply the same environmental regulations from sub-arctic tundra to sub-tropical swamp land. It doesn't work. And if you need to change it via local environmental needs the place to do that is the most local of areas, the State or local government, not at the highest end which is the federal government.

Indeed the federal charter we call the US Constitution allows for States to get together and ask the federal government for help in setting up a multi-State organization to deal with cross-border issues. So long as it does not tread on federal powers, such organizations are the way for States to deal with common problems across their borders. The federal government doesn't run such organizations, the member States do. This concept was also brought up under the recent health care debates to allow multiple States to pool their requirements, de-conflict them and create their own multi-State based insurance requirement system for those wanting to get health insurance. What these sorts of agencies do is cut the federal government out of the regulatory loop because it has no power to start that loop in the first place.

Not to harp too much on Republicans but the next place of rampant graft, corruption and federal policy going where it shouldn't is in the Dept. of Agriculture started by... President Lincoln.

Hey! He couldn't be right all the time.

The Dept. of Agriculture was a key government instrument for helping to expand farming into the Soutwest of the US. It encouraged the type of straight furrow, high water farming that was the norm in the Mississippi direct drainage basin in place that had a bit less rainfall. A bit less when we got to them, at least. What this did is encourage the expansion of farms with government help so that these techniques were used when the local natives didn't use nor want them at all. Why didn't they want them? Dry spells lasting years to a decade or more which cyclically go through the region due to Pacific wind currents. The result is known as the 'Dust Bowl' and it was miraculously 'ended' by USDA people wanting tree wind breaks planted and examining the idea of contour farming. Oh, the rains returned, too. The plus side of all this was knocking down the western locust so we don't get swarms of them going over the great plains every couple of years. That was due to farming in Colorado and Wyoming... of course those farms are now becoming uneconomical so they are dying out and you can expect the locust to come back as their population was only cut down to wild areas, not eliminated.

Isn't that great?

Along with 'modern' farming policy comes the draining of the Oglalala Aquifer which sits under a number of western States and is utilized for dry, upland farming via irrigation. Note this is not native dry, upland farming which used little irrigation, but the reduction of a deep aquifer that has a re-charge time that no one has measured but an inch a year for a few hundred feet of it begins to tell you of the time frames involved. Sounds like a good, multi-State organization is needed here instead of the corrupt blunderbuss of the USDA. No scalpel needed, just ignore the problem until it becomes a 'crisis' and expand government to 'solve' it! Gotta love how that works, huh?

Next on modern farming is turning food into fuel. What an asinine idea! You can't eat ethanol... well you can but its not a great foodstuff, unlike beer... and the conversion rate of corn to ethanol is excellent but ignores the fact that such policies are hitting the third world, and soon the first world, hard. Mexico has a problem in that their old, rural agricultural system that helped to sustain their population went north in search of jobs. First to the cities and then, when those manufacturing jobs from the US went overseas to places like Thailand and Vietnam, those migrants decided that the US was a great place to get illegal jobs. This was great while corn was cheap via the US, but corn has gotten very expensive because human food corn is now being replaced by corn to make ethanol, which I go over in this article. Now with jobs running scarce in Mexico along with food where is the money at? Why criminal organizations, of course! Jobs disappearing due to globalization is one thing, but food disappearing due to asinine farming policy of a neighboring nation is another.

Then there are the subsidies to agriculture beyond just paying people not to farm. Those are about 12-15% of the USDA budget and go far beyond corn to such things as setting price floors for some crops (like sugar beets) and guarantee payments.... plus payments to those farmers owning a farm in one State and not farming there to get their payment in another State.

Isn't that great?

The US government 'protects' certain crops NOT through long-term storage of a small percentage each year in case of famine but by paying people who can't compete in the world market and paying others NOT to compete in the world market, both on the taxpayer dime. Thankfully the current generation of farmers is in their late '50s and early '60s and as we aren't encouraging the next generation to take up agriculture as a business...

What problems could we POSSIBLY get from that?

Why I haven't even hit on the 'entitlements' yet, and I have already covered all of the energy and food production for the Nation under the lovely control of the federal government via regulations that only suit the feel-good Congresscritters and the petty tyrants in the bureaucracy wanting to control the Nation.

Who needs Islamo-Fascists when you can get the home grown regular sort at home?

Of course we also have the other sort to deal with overseas, too... not that we will have any energy or food to deal with them.

Mind you the rest of the planet depends on our food supply and the fact that China has not had a good harvest and even some dustbowls recently points out that they are on the brink of a catastrophe. There are already food shortages in the kleptocracies in Africa, but that is normal and cyclical... having governments that were relatively stable dictatorships go under to such things is a different matter...

The next President?

Name the one that will aim to take out, not manage 'better' or 'reform' but REMOVE any or all of the following: USDA, EPA, FHA, Fannie/Freddie/Ginnie, select parts of the Dept. of Interior, Dept. of Energy.

I can add to that list: Dept. of Education, DoJ (did you know when we had a small government that each agency had to enforce its own little jurisdiction and there was NO DoJ?), BATFE, Dept. of Labor (can't people figure this out on their own), SBA, anything involving the arts & humanities... and the UN and its dues and various hangers-on.

When you are facing insolvency it is time to do away with luxuries and that time is now here. These places can be closed down, their funding removed, and those that are part of the federal government have their property and equipment sold off to generate some final revenue.

Yes, the entitlements have to take a hit. I have a standard prescription for those.

Close off SSA to new entrants. End the retirement age. Turn SSA into a regular spending program and get rid of FICA. Give everyone an account they can spend from that is federal tax free where any investments can accumulate without any hit to them, and then allow spending after holding them for 20 years or 20 years after the date of issuance of the SSA card. In other words find good savings that appreciate even minimally and you are set. Anyone in SSA who wants to get out can, and have such an account in their name immediately with the thanks of the US government to becoming a self-sufficient citizen once again. Once the last person getting payments dies or quits the program, it is ended.

Add Medicare and Medicaid together. Divide by 2. Apportion via Block Grants to the States to spend on health care for their people. Stage this down to zero over 5 years. That is the end of the federal take-over of your medical care, and you are on your own. Lobby your State and local governments or help with charitable institutions to get something to cover those without the ability to get good medical care. The US government sucks at it.

Put together a flat tax for corporations and individuals, remove all other taxes. For those earning under the poverty line the tax can be graduated down, but everyone MUST pay into the US government as it serves ALL OF US without exception. If you can figure out how to live without having a job, then our blessings should be upon those people as they have figured out how to carry their load without burdening the rest of us.

These give a firm and stable position that if you want to 'retire' you must DIY with NO help from the government and if you can't figure out you need health care then charitable institutions are your answer.

Do taxes go up? Yes for those currently paying no federal income tax, but they may find that their new 'tax rate' is actually lower as there is NO FICA around to bite you.

No new taxes are necessary for this: no consumption tax or sales tax. Those are left up to the States as we don't TRUST the US federal government to have such income capability. Look how it has squandered the Progressive Income Tax by jerking everyone around with it.

Defense policy?

It starts at the borders.

Not Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Timbuktu. We have a massive criminal insurgency threatening to spill over into the US and we have zip, zilch, nada in the way of preparations for it spilling over. Sorry, that doesn't fly and neither do 'open borders' or 'path to citizenship' that doesn't start with an Embassy in a foreign country.

I'm willing to cut down on the illegal immigrant magnets by doing a 'Three Strikes and You're Out' policy for employers:

- First instance, fine and a couple of weeks in the pokey for all involved in the hiring chain from CEO to local approval office in a company.

- Second time is a massive fine (say 10% of the gross income of a business) and a year in Club Fed for all in that hiring chain.

- Third time the company is broken up at auction, never to be reformed and all in the hiring chain go away for 10 years in Club Fed.

There, that is a sane immigration policy in support of our defense policy and should get some of the corporate scofflaws out of the way in no time at all. See how that goes?

I'm sure that would deflate the OWS people in no time and taking the support for the big banks away would collapse their fun little support for tyrannical socialism/communism/progressivism/anarchism. They will hate not having Big Daddy Government to hit up for support, but them's the breaks.

In other words a policy that looks like:

1) A vastly smaller federal government getting back to basics and leaving the States and the people alone, which means ending entire agencies and their regulations all at one go.

2) Ending the entitlements as they cost too much, keeping promises to those on SSA and letting the States figure out if they want something better on their own for medical care.

3) Flat tax, no exceptions, everyone sends a check to the IRS.

4) Defense must start at home at the borders. COIN isn't just for overseas any more.

5) Letting the legal system handle the collapsing banks and corporations either via their own hand in tinkering with regulations that will not sustain them or in hiring those they shouldn't hire. Good companies go unmolested. The bad ones downsize or disappear via normal legal means. Nothing, and I do mean NOTHING, is 'too big to fail'.

Yes, Rome wasn't built in a day.

It was, however, looted in 3.

We are closer to the latter than the former.

For the life of me I can't seem to find a politician who has a clue on what policy is.

Plans come from policy.

Methodology is utilized to enact plans.

If no one has a policy, then their plans are based on nothing, anchored to nothing and entirely too flexible for my taste. I can tell a Presidential Candidate who has no policy in minutes. I am not voting for any who can't articulate what it is as they are, by default, a Progressive. No matter how nice the 'plans' sound, they are words spoken in the winds of opportunism.

07 October 2011

When last we left the SKS stock refinishing the two spirit based coats had been done and only the final coats were left.

Looking around at various art sites and ship building sites I came across two oil semi-varnish recipes that had elements of what I was looking for in an oil varnish that was simple to make. Beyond the oil I was looking for a bit more hardness and elasticity, both, something that instrument makers look for in the Viol family of instruments. That said running resin in boiling oil was not on my agenda. I wanted something that could be closer to a pre-mixed situation using solvents and what I found were a couple of recipes that hit right in this range. One was a varnish for going over sketches which is equal parts:

Stand Oil

Turpentine

Damar Varnish (1:1 dissolved in turpentine)

Venetian Turpentine

That is a very simple recipe, and leaves you with something that takes a few days to dry. It would have to be applied thinned and then left in a relatively dust free environment for 2-3 days minimum. This was not exactly what I wanted but close.

At a shipbuilding site I hit on a recipe for doing (or re-doing) wood floors, and the parts ratio is as given:

10 parts Tung Oil

1 part BLO

1 part Damar Varnish (1:1)

1 part Turpentine

This is getting extremely close to what I want: a solvent varnish that is high in oil and yet offers some hardening speed for its surface.

At this point I decided that the actual factors wanted would have to include Damar Varnish (1:1) which I already had, Citrus Solvent, Venetian Turpentine and Oil of Turpentine (Rectified Turpentine). The last gives some 'bite' to a layer for adhesion to a previous layer (if I understand my painting terms correctly), plus it is mentioned in a wide number of older recipes for other varnishes. I still needed good drying, low tack time, and hardness with elasticity. Thus I went with the base plus stuff mixed into it which is a great compromise as these things go.

My final mix is:

10 parts Tung Oil

1 part BLO

1 part Citrus Solvent (then 1.5 on second coat)

1 part Venetian Turpentine

1 part Oil of Turpentine

This gives a thin, light colored varnish that can be applied from a simple dropper bottle and I used 1.5 ml as the parts amount. I would up the Citrus Solvent to see if I could cut dry times between coats.

The methodology used is a wet sanding with the varnish with 400 grit sandpaper, do thoroughly with one drop covering up to 9 square inches of stock area sanding with the grain. Then a drop by drop hand rubbing (with latex gloves on) over the entire stock rubbing in the direction of the grain.

Let sit between 2 and 4 hours and clean excess off (it is mostly Tung Oil) and I found that it was tacky to start with but once the rag got moving it went very quickly. Basically you want to get rid of the thick coating (I used about 30 drops total for a coat, with extra added when the sandpaper got dry or when the latex glove stuck to the stock) and leave just what had adhered immediately at the surface.

This was done twice over 2 days and it dries pretty well overnight. If done on the plain wood this stuff nearly disappears. I tried it on some cut boards and one drop spread around nearly vanishes.

After the next day a light going over with 0000 steel wool replacement yields the final result. Here is the right side of the stock, no color correction applied.

I was worried about the darkness that the spirit varnish was giving to the stock and I was amazed that the entire set of tonal qualities lightened just after one application. With two the result is wonderful.

The left side of the stock:

This really is something much, much better than I was expecting after the spirit varnish coats. The entire set of tonal qualities has now evened out greatly from the original material.

After a day of sweating and cursing, and having to do just a bit of sanding and light filing to get off some errant finish, the actual hardware has been installed. So I can now give the finished product:

If you remember this is how it looked coming in:

Yeah, pretty bad and soaked with cosmoline. The entire left rear of the stock looked like something wholly different from the rest of it and with poor definition to it. Now it blends in very well with the rest of the stock, it is a world of difference.

And the right side:

And there you have it.

I want to thank all of those making this possible: Classic Arms Inc.,Steve Kehaya and Joe Poyer for their book The SKS Carbine (CKC45g) 4th Revised and Expanded Edition published by North Cape Publications, Inc. which has been my guide to stripping this weapon, Brownell's, Murray Gunsmithing, Buy Milsurp, Apex Gun Parts, The Real Milk Paint Company, my sister and her co-worker at Moog who helped get the pin pusher made, Colman's Military Surplus, and I can't remember the name of every supply house/ art house/ and reseller of resins that I've had to go to throughout this.

I'm expecting a longer butt pad to increase LOP and a few other bits and pieces to put on, but nothing to change the original equipment.

Now it is time to take it to a gunsmith and make sure I actually put it together right and that it is safe to fire.

I am ran across the term Trustafarian while perusing an article by Zombie at PJM. She was using it to describe the class of people at The Ongoing Occupation of America post on 29 SEP 2011. I had never run across the term and decided it needed just a bit of personal definition which required a few days to mull it over. By the time I finally started to get the term I then came up with a definition after Herman Cain criticized those at the OWS (Occupy Wall Street/ Out With Sanity/ Ongoing With Stupidity/ Outing Witless Students... take your pick) at Hot Air. I will correct a few spelling errors and such just to make it clear who he was talking about and what a Trustafarian is by what they do.

= = =

You might be a Trustafarian if you are part of the OWS crowd and…

- Have any electronic device starting with an “i-”

- Have a pair of sneakers costing over $100

- Have a shirt, pair of pants or jacket with a logo emblazoned on it

- Have an ‘art’ shirt that cost more than $50

- Have a netbook/notebook/laptop/tablet computer

- Have more rings festooning your body than a packed bar has glasses on the bar

- Have a bandana/headband/keffiyah with a designer tag on it

- Have a pair of shoes that has individual toes as a feature

- Have any piece of clothing other than a belt made out of leather

- Have more pieces of artwork tattoo’d to your body than a SOHO art gallery has

- Have a pre-printed sign because you can’t figure out how to use a magic marker

- Have an item with the mass murderer Che on it

- Spout off about how a system you can’t even understand needing to go because your parents have paid your way through school

- Have a law degree

- Have any degree in any set of studies involving a hyphen or ethnic or gender in its title

- Have more gold jewelry on your body than a pawn shop has in its inventory

- Can say Media Matters with a straight face and think it means something

Yes these are leading indicators of being a Trustafarian.

Any Trustafarian needs to run, not walk, saunter, or just, you know, go more or less in the direction of, the nearest mental health clinic and report yourself with permanent detachment from reality syndrome… they will spend a decade ‘treating’ you and making you poor so you will then have something to complain about.

And if you think you paid too much for your college education then ASK FOR YOUR MONEY BACK as it has done you NO GOOD AT ALL TO GO THERE.

= = =

You see? A handy visual guide to the Trustafarians! If you see someone with MORE than one of these attributes who is at the OWS gatherings (or 'supporting them') you have a Trustafarian: those living off of their parent's trust funds.

Easy to do, no?

Then I realized that they also fit under another term, which is a bit broader, in this headliner at Hot Air about how these OWS folks just might be, you know, POPULISTS! Be still my beating stomach... I commented thusly...

= = =

Just a buncha Trustafarians.

Old hipsters and young dipsters.

The doucheoise.

= = =

Doucheoise was proposed as a new name for hipsters (I'm not going to bother looking up who proposed it) but as the class of people who are douche's, it also overlaps highly with the Trustafarians. In fact all Trustafarians are part of the Doucheoise, but not all Doucheoise are Trustafarians and come by their status via other means. The Trustafarians, in other words, are a sub-species.

Ahh... science!

I did a bit more after that on the Studentia branch of the Trustafarinensi.

= = =

And for the dipsticks complaining about their college loans and blaming the BANKS, just who is it that is ASKING for the money?

Oh, yeah, the COLLEGES.

How about BLAMING THEM for asking so much? And asking for your money back as you didn’t learn a damn thing there other than how to whine, moan and complain about how ‘hard you have it’. The banks are pushing you asshats to take out a loan the SCHOOLS ARE.

= = =

Yup! It isn't the banks, folks, but the bubble of higher education that Insty has been talking about for a couple of years. It is a much, much larger bubble than SSA, home loans, and medical cost inflation from 1970 to present. It is the biggest bubble right next to all of them taken together next to our federal debt. All these little bubbles gotta pop to get things set straight and the big one has to go down by removing the inflator we call 'government'.

Now since I'm the helpful sort with the guidebooks and such, though in no way the Shell Answer Man because I don't take questions, I decided to sum up not only what the problem is for the various sub-species of the Doucheoise, but what you need to do about it. I really don't have time for real posts these days, what with finishing up my SKS stock and getting the thing re-assembled, plus having another 2-4 projects on my agenda, so these will have to do.

This is from another Hot Air thread at a Quotes of the Day posting. A spelling error and one typo corrected, mangled syntax and logic left as-is.

= = =

Remember in a deal in which the schools ask for more money and the banks lend it to students, who is to blame for the high cost of education?

A) The schools for CHARGING IT?

B) The students wanting the money to PAY FOR IT?

C) The banks for LENDING IT?

These OWS people blame C, put no responsibility on B and can’t think that those actually doing A who are the originators of the cost are to blame.

Now put in homes and who is to blame?

A) Those asking for more money than a home is worth?

B) Those wanting to pay those high amounts?

C) The banks for lending the money?

Again if you are an OWS’r you blame C, put no responsibility on B, and never, ever blame those asking for unrealistically high prices A.

In each case the root cause of the ‘problem’?

Government regulation that sets the playing field for giving loans. In the first part are federally backed loans that MUST be paid back to the federal government and that you can’t get around paying back.

In the second it is the government determining the risk, setting regulations as to who MUST be able to get loans for FAIRNESS which allows such things as NINJA loans to meet pre-set quotas by the regulators.

Now when you put the government as the D option in both, who is to blame?

A) Those asking for extraordinarily high amounts that they know YOU CAN GET via regulation?

B) Those seeking such high amounts and not questioning the ACTUAL VALUE of what they are getting and not blinking at the COST being asked?

C) Those providing the money as intermediaries for the government regulatory system because, to do business, they have NO OTHER OPTION in those realms?

D) The government for rigging the system to allow A to put B into debt via C the regulated intermediary?

The banks are not the villains, here, although they do share some blame in setting up D, it is the regulatory system, itself, that is swayed by such input. When A and C collude with D, it is B that is shafted.

The answer to what to do is to get D out of the equation so that they do NOT write exacting ‘fair’ regulations and only put out statutes against misrepresenting value and cost from both A and C so that B can make a decision based on actual facts, not promises of ‘fairness’ in a system being rigged against them.

These Trustafarians, the members of the Doucheoise, are HELPING those in the A category to vilify the C category so that they can get MORE REGULATIONS THAT DON’T WORK AND MAKE THINGS WORSE from the D category. They are not playing class warfare but committing economic suicide on a personal basis. If they meant what they said they would join the Tea Parties and work to get the government out of the system so that there is less to no government save for cases of fraud that need be ruled upon. As it is they are supporting the existing fraud-backed structure and want nothing to do with removing it.

Yes Rome wasn’t built in a day.

It was, however, sacked in 3.

You are seeing the sackers, not the builders, wanting their bite and not expecting the collapse to effect them one little, tiny, bit. If they get what they want they have a greatly limited life span because of what they get, that will shorten down decades to years, months, weeks or even days.

If you aren’t prepared for that disaster NOW then you will be joining them.

Your job is to survive, help and educate. And all three MUST be done AT THE SAME TIME. And to those who don’t listen, who scream and rage, you must turn away FROM to help those that WILL listen to reason. That is your duty as a citizen to your fellow citizens. Those that aren’t listening, who are screaming, who are marching… they are the walking dead if they get their way. You can save them but only if you do the right things as a citizen, now. It all depends on YOU being civilized each and every single day of your life no matter HOW BAD things get, all the way to your last breath on this earth. Only your fear will stop you…

= = =

All that stuff I've written about for survivalism, DIYism, plus looking at terrorism, organized crime, money laundering, politics... all that stuff... still comes down to you.

These people blockading their common sense for freebies don't understand how the world works and just want everything to be free. Just like the USSR! They can't live there any more since it collapsed under the weight of what happens when no one CAN achieve and everything is FREE and damned scarce, but that doesn't matter to the Trustafarians.

It does matter to the person wanting to be civilized and a citizen.

What you must do in such conditions is clear and I've spelled it out via hundreds of posts.

Your duty to your fellow citizens is to survive and be the one at the other end offering a hand up to a better life of personal liberty and freedom.

The verbiage that goes with being a free man, an individual, is well known and alien to the ears of those in the Trustafarian crowd, but should strike home to any who wish to lead a free life of equal justice, not 'fairness' as what is 'fair' is in the eye of the beholder:

I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, de-briefed or numbered.

My life is my own.

The OWSr's? They DO want to be pushed (look at how they got there by having helpful 'organizers' push them), stamped (see the guidebook?), indexed (just HOW MANY loans do they have they can't pay up on?), briefed (again the organizers), de-briefed (they are going to lose everything including their briefs), numbered ('we are the 0.00001% who are the 99%'!). Listen to any of the 'call outs' done by 'organizers' or 'radicals' or Frances Fox Piven or Cornel West and you begin to imagine Monty Python's Life of Brian in which the call out is 'You are all individuals' and the response 'YES WE ARE ALL INDIVIDUALS' save for that radical saying 'I'm not...'

There you go!

Now back to my normal business around here.

Gotta get that SKS up and running and then put the drum magazine through its paces now.

The Commentary Policy

Your Host

Trying to save what thoughts I have in case my time for having them comes to an end. I keep many ways of looking at the world and from many perspectives, but they are each a part of a larger whole and reflect my thoughts and feelings.
Diabetic, cataleptic, naracoleptic, hyperlipidemia, cerebral atrophy, allergies and *still* glad to be alive. Founding and sole member of The Jacksonian Party. mail: ajacksonian at gmail dot com

What D&D Character Am I?

Alignment:Neutral Good A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment because because it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.

Race:Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.

Class:Wizards are arcane spellcasters who depend on intensive study to create their magic. To wizards, magic is not a talent but a difficult, rewarding art. When they are prepared for battle, wizards can use their spells to devastating effect. When caught by surprise, they are vulnerable. The wizard's strength is her spells, everything else is secondary. She learns new spells as she experiments and grows in experience, and she can also learn them from other wizards. In addition, over time a wizard learns to manipulate her spells so they go farther, work better, or are improved in some other way. A wizard can call a familiar- a small, magical, animal companion that serves her. With a high Intelligence, wizards are capable of casting very high levels of spells.